Lupus patient relies on faith, humor in dealing with illness

The social worker’s office was just down the hall of the north Florida nursing home, but it would take Melissa Roberts six-and-a-half hours to make it there.
   
Dragging her 438-pound body into a wheelchair, the 38-year-old lupus patient was determined to make it to the social worker’s office to beg for better care. Two weeks had passed since her last sponge bath. Bedsores scorched her body, and her diaper was changed once each day, leaving her with diaper rash.
   
For Roberts, the crawl to the social worker’s office was the beginning of a fight for survival she would eventually use to share how God had worked in her life. Roberts could barely talk when she arrived at the nursing home a few months earlier, suffering the effects of what she believes was heavy medication and a stroke. It was two weeks before she could let out a few screams — her first feeble attempts at survival. After 10 weeks, she could string a few words together.
   
“Basically, I couldn’t do anything,” Roberts said. “I (just) laid there.” Determined to make it that day, Roberts made the slow, painful journey to the social worker’s office.
   
“The social worker looked at me and her mouth dropped,” Roberts said. “You could smell me a mile away.”
   
The encounter marked Roberts’ journey out of the nursing home, with medical workers initiating physical and occupational therapy. Seven months after she was wheeled in, Roberts left the facility using a walker. By then she was down to 375 pounds.
    
Roberts was diagnosed with lupus in 1985 and began showing effects of the illness five years later. In 1993 she was confined to a wheelchair and a hospital bed.
    
After she returned to her home in Ozark, Roberts and her husband soon divorced. “I changed when I got sick, and so did he,” she said.
    
The strains of the illness left her battling physical deterioration. Lupus causes the body’s immune system to attack healthy tissue.
  
Between the disease and the medication, Roberts lost her teeth and hair, became diabetic, showed early signs of osteoporosis and suffered high blood pressure.
  
There was also emotional instability and disorientation. Depression became a regular companion. It was at the worst point her then-husband and father-in-law decided, along with her doctor, to admit her to a nursing home in 1996.
  
A year later, just as things were slowly looking better, Roberts found herself on her own. It was a struggle. Unable to afford her medication, she attempted to drop it cold turkey.
Roberts remained determined, though, eventually dropping her weight to 180 pounds.
  
Along with losing weight, Roberts has regained her driver’s license and owns a car. She has remained on disability but believes she may be taken off it because of her recent progress. “The Lord worked a miracle when I was in the nursing home,” Roberts said.
  
“Now I have to rely on Him more for my basic needs,” she added. “I want a lot, but I don’t need anything.”
  
Roberts’ energy seems endless some days. And, like many lupus patients, she also has periods of time where she feels she can barely leave her bed. As quickly as the problems hit, they retreat, only to return again.
   
It is during the times she has boundless energy that Roberts likes to stay on the go as much as possible — singing in the choir at Ridgecrest Baptist Church, Dothan, volunteering at the church and spending time with friends.
   
She told her story for the first time last December during Ridgecrest’s Christmas program. Since then, she has been invited to speak at other churches.
   
“It was like being naked,” she said of her first speaking engagement. “But God has done so much for me, I need to tell it.”
   
There is no cure for lupus. And though the pain is often severe, patients often do not look sick, other than the appearance of a reddening of the face. Lupus tends to strike generations of the same family. Roberts’ mother died of lupus at 40, and Roberts’ daughter also has the disease.
   
In addition to her faith, Roberts relies on humor in dealing with her illness.
“You should try being single and over 40 with no teeth,” she said. “I don’t think my testimony’s that great,” she said.
   
“The part that’s the miracle, to me, is how far I’ve come since my divorce. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. “I don’t know why God let me go through it,” Roberts said.
   
“I really question why He didn’t let me die, but it’s not in an angry way. I just wonder what He has for me to do. I’m amazed with what I was and what I am now,” she said.